


Dark Matter

by NoiraKai



Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: M/M, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-20
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 12:18:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1648367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoiraKai/pseuds/NoiraKai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The war brought them together. Now peace is tearing them apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Matter

 

He was numb with fury by the time they retrieved him from the brig, a deadly calm that might have been mistaken for resignation to his fate. The MPs knew better, though. It showed in the precautions they took, the electrified shackles on Cain’s hands and feet, and a host of armored guards to escort him out. The sharp ring of stun phasers crackled in the air and against the walls, floating at the edge of hearing and setting everything on edge.

Cain waited for the right moment, some slight distraction or lapse in their concentration, calculating how much damage he could do before the shackles took him down. The corridor echoed and stretched forever, as he got into that zone of ultra-awareness, gearing himself up for a fight and a mad dash. Mapping out his route through the ship in his mind, honing in on a singular mission: _Kill Bering. Kill the bastard that stabbed you in the back and sent you back to that shithole to die._

But then everything stopped. Four hands jerked him back and spun him in the direction of an interrogation room, putting him face to face with the last person he’d want to see when planning to tear the place apart.

Abel.

One of the guards opened the door and they shoved him in, the bright lights casting shadows on his face from his grown-out bangs. He didn’t even remember to struggle, as they forced him into a chair and secured his shackled wrists and ankles to the floor, staring at Abel as he wrestled with the maddening idea that they thought he might hurt him.

Abel had been hurt enough. That much was evident from the long scar that jutted across the side of his face, a few stitches still holding it closed. And the prosthetic hand Abel hid under the table, as if Cain hadn’t seen it in medical, as if Cain hadn’t been the one covered in blood and holding his good hand while they escaped from the burning wreckage of their ship.

Cain just stared at him as the door shut, no air in his lungs to speak in the vacuum-like silence that meant the guards had left them alone. No coherent thought in his brain other than the sobering, familiar comfort, of Abel occupying the same, small space.

The blond didn’t look at him, his good hand worrying at some dent in the table. He looked like he hadn’t slept since the last time Cain had seen him.

“They told me it might help, to talk to you,” Abel said quietly. “That I might get some kind of closure out of it, or something,” he scoffed, then looked up at Cain with an accusation in his dark eyes. “But they don’t know the half of it, do they?” he whispered, shaking his head tightly. “I don’t dare tell them what you did… what we did… I’m too disgusted with myself.”

Careful not to show anything on his face, Cain tried to swallow the knot forming in his throat, Abel’s scathing words as effective as a firing squad, the antithesis of pain. It made him want to die.

“I trusted you,” Abel hissed, leaning intensely into the table. “And I have tried to find some way to justify what you did. And I have _tried_ to find some way to make it my fault, like somehow I should have seen it coming,” he said, gesturing towards himself with his good hand. He shook his head again and closed his eyes, a pointedly disappointed motion. “But you… manipulated every facet of who I am,” Abel accused, letting the words sink in by speaking slow. “You _used me_ in every way that it is possible to use a person.”

Cain’s pulse pounded through his entire body. Three weeks he’d spent seething in the brig, convincing himself that he was the victim in all of this, only to have all that crumble away with one look in Abel’s eyes.

“And no matter what the ends or the means were…” Abel shrugged weakly. “It doesn’t make it right. What you did… was wrong,” he declared, as if Cain didn’t know that. “It was wrong and it was fucked up. And I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you.”

Cain blinked. His eyes stung, making him think maybe he hadn’t closed his eyelids since he’d stepped in the room. But he wanted to take this in, had to make the most of it, because he would never see Abel again as long as he lived.

“Is there anything you’d like to say to me?” Abel asked, his voice equal parts irritation and patience and indifference and hope, always the diplomat.

He could have said a lot of things. He could have told Abel he was sorry. That he didn’t have much of a choice. That if Abel had been offered a way out of that hellhole, had been promised a pardon, that he would have done it, too. That it hadn’t meant anything at first, but then everything changed. That of all the things that he’d been promised, of all the things that had been ripped away, that losing Abel was the thing that hurt the most. That of all the danger and the daredevil stunts, it was this moment he wasn’t sure he would survive.

_“Get the fuck out.”_

Frozen for a moment, Abel finally nodded his head, solemn like he hadn’t expected any different. He stared at Cain for a few more seconds before finally lifting up out of the chair, slow and unsteady and clearly favoring his good hand. He didn’t look at Cain or even say anything else, just knocked on the steel door to let the guards know that they were through.

Unable to help himself, Cain turned to watch him leave through the reinforced glass, getting a glimpse of a very friendly-looking arm going around Abel’s shoulder, and a long blond braid.

Well wasn’t that just fucking perfect. Even as his ribs seized in his chest, Cain told himself he didn’t care. What the fuck difference did it make if Abel was fucking Keeler, or the rest of the goddamn ship for that matter? Abel was free to do whatever he wanted.

And Cain was going back to prison, for the rest of his sorry fucking life.

  
  


 

 

**Author's Note:**

> sooooo there's a lot more to this story but I'm too chicken to actually write it, turns out. The title comes from something that happens like ten chapters from now.


End file.
